


A Martyr, A King, A Child

by ehmazing



Series: Imperfect Contrition [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Backstory, Family Drama, Gen, Interspecies Relationship(s), Royalty, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 08:58:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13854405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ehmazing/pseuds/ehmazing
Summary: The rearing of a Crown Prince.





	A Martyr, A King, A Child

**Author's Note:**

> CAN'T BELIEVE ONCE AGAIN I'VE BEEN SUCKERED INTO CARING ABOUT LOTOR but uh I actually wrote this fic in s3, let it languish, and now I'm airing it out again so it can likely be entirely jossed by s5. MY USUAL PROCESS……
> 
> Another title taken from the chapter of the same name in Hilary Mantel's novel [A Place of Greater Safety.](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/101921.A_Place_of_Greater_Safety) Look this book is real good, ok??

As long as he can remember, he is told that he was born to rule.

“Not born,” the High Priestess always corrects, “ _made._ Your genetic code was constructed down to the last molecule with every fiber of your father’s strength and cunning. I gave you the best of all possible Galran traits, but improved tenfold. You are the essence of your father and more, my Prince. You were born to no one, and made for no purpose but to serve him.”

It is a lie, but one he believed until he began more rigorous scientific studies. His tutor told him—a cocksure smile on his scaly mouth, one that Lotor would have taken great pleasure in beating away—that even children from birthing pods must have mothers. The other half of his perfect, pre-made chromosomes must have a source.

“You’re hiding something from me,” he snarled at the High Priestess when he told her as such, throwing his study tablet at her feet. “You’re always hiding something from me!”

“There is nothing I would keep from you, my Prince,” she said, fixing him with her usual cold stare. “There is only that which you are not yet ready to learn.”

His tutor did not arrive to his quarters the following day. The next one says genetic biology is useless to a future Emperor, and begins with how best to manipulate the nervous system instead.

 

* * *

 

There is an old proverb painted on the walls of his first training room: _Dragoti vaal seski’in na grox._ “For a true soldier, war never ends.” Lotor’s life is scheduled down to the second, planned year-by-year for the next five centuries. He is woken before power-up and finished with his studies in time to join morning drills. He starts to train with real soldiers for opponents as soon as his instructor deems that he’s strong enough not to be killed in the first round. His meals are selected to give him the optimum amount of nutrition and are run through half a dozen testers to make sure they aren’t poisoned. He is ordered to bed and monitored on a feed to make sure he doesn’t break curfew and disrupt his sleep cycle.

He is not presented in public until he is near fifty. He remembers it quite clearly, for the summons from the High Priestess was the first time one of his days had ever gone off-script.

“You are now ready to be officially named as your father’s heir, my Prince.” He is still small enough that the High Priestess has to bend her hunched back to look him in the eyes. “You will greet your Empire at his side today.” Her eyes narrow. “Silently, of course.”

They have a suit of armor made in his size, a miniature general’s plate and maille. An attendant has to help him strap the gauntlets on. He hobbles awkwardly after the sentries and told to wait with a group of guards in a dark hall.

“So the rumors are true,” one of the guards whispers to another, darting a glance at him. “The Prince is a half-breed. Think this is why the Emperor kept him hidden for so long?”

“Who knows,” the other shrugs. “Wonder what kind he is.”

Lotor bites his lip to prevent from crying out in fear when the ground rattles beneath them. The hidden lift rises under their feet, carrying them through a trapdoor that opens suddenly in the ceiling. He shields his eyes as they ascend into brightness, the lift sealing flush with the floor of a large, square chamber. There are top-tier generals filling the stacked seats that surround him. When he turns around, he spots his father at a podium, the royal banner filling the wall behind him and the High Priestess with her druids.

“Nobles of the Galra Empire,” his father says, “I present to you my son, Crown Prince Lotor of the House Zhin’aath, blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh. The Crown Prince is ready and willing to undergo the Test of Succession. Should he succeed, will you honor him as my kin and Heir, your future Emperor of All Worlds?”

“We will,” the audience intones as one.

His father clenches his fist over his chest in salute.

“Then let us begin.”

The guards surrounding Lotor draw their weapons.

When it is over, he’s been cut in three places and broken several toes on his left foot. The maille is stuck to his skin with sweat. The guards lie dead around him, their blood pooling at his feet.

“The Test is complete,” his father announces. “Bear witness and pay homage to the Crown Prince Lotor!”

The nobles kneel. _“Vrepit sa,”_ echoes off the walls.

Limping, Lotor takes his place at the podium. Yet his father does not spare him a single glance.

 

* * *

 

_What kind is he?_

The Test of Succession is circulated on the feeds, run in loops on the military channels. Everyone talks about him as if the fact that he is Crown Prince means he can’t hear commoners speak. His schedule remains the same, but on occasion his studies will be cancelled for a parade he must appear in, or he’ll miss training for a planetside visit. Galran children in the colonies stare at him, giggling behind their hands. He is twice their age but half their size. His eyes have a strange, iridescent film he’s never seen on anyone else. His fur grows unevenly from only one spot on his head.

_A half-breed. What kind is he?_

Every night he gets in bed, turns over, and activates the override battery he installed in the wall to turn off the monitoring feed. He rewired the bay doors to open just wide enough for a test pod to squeeze through. More than once he’s almost been caught, but he always makes it back to his quarters before the servants are due to wake him.

Flying the test pods, teaching himself dives and spins and hairpin turns, is the only time he feels safe enough to shout all he wants.

 

* * *

 

Once a month, Lotor is granted the boon of a visit from his father. It is a day he anticipates and dreads in equal measure. It is always the same, as routine as a recurring nightmare: he is shuttled to Central Command, escorted to the waiting hall outside of his father’s quarters, and then shuttled again to the Colosseum, standing stiffly at his father’s side in the cabin.

“Report the progress of your studies,” his father orders, and Lotor does. “See that you remain diligent in improving yourself,” his father replies, and Lotor avows so. They remain silent for the rest of the flight, and silent for however long his father deigns to watch the fights that day, and silent for the flight back to Command.

Before parting, his father says, “You will uphold the honor of the Galra Empire, Prince Lotor,” and his son salutes him. Then they repeat the same dance again in another fifty days.

The gladiators win, on occasion. When they win too often, they are culled. It’s not very entertaining to watch the fights when you know in the end that the outcome will never change. Lotor does not share this opinion with his father, however, because he suspects that the fights are one of the only activities his father truly enjoys. Maybe this ritual began because his father actually tried to share one of his interests with his son—then again, maybe not.

One particular streak goes on longer than the others. The gladiator is a woman with two white horns and two long, brown cranial glands falling down her back. Her teeth were filed down when she was first captured, making her mouth clamp in an awkward line because her jaws no longer fit together evenly. She is not strong, but she is quick; after her right hand is broken she learns to throw with her left. Lotor watches her climb up the winning bracket for close to a year, each time appearing a little thinner, a little paler. Her skin is so scarred that it’s hard to tell what coloration her species actually is.

On her sixtieth consecutive victory, his father rises from his throne.

“My people,” he says, his voice roaring over the speakers in a gravelly purr, “I must commend this warrior for her skill in battle. She is a champion truly worthy of this arena, is she not?”

The crowd agrees, howling and cheering. The gladiator is still panting, drops of sweat rolling off of her glands, her crooked mouth bleeding purple. Her twin knives gleam from the eyes of her latest kill.

His father puts out a hand and the crowd quiets at once. “Champion,” he addresses the gladiator, “what is your name?”

She walks over to the fallen beast, tugging the knives from its eyes. She wipes her face on her ragged sleeve, smearing it violet. She doesn’t even look up. The Colosseum grows so quiet that if Lotor listens closely, he can hear the ceiling light batteries hum.

“Frasim,” she finally says.

Lotor is in awe that a half-dead gladiator could insult his father simply by making him wait.

But his father smiles, his own teeth sharp, white, and perfectly even. “Frasim,” he repeats, “daughter of Regulan. Descendent of Trigel. The last living heir of the royal Dalterian line.”

The gladiator looks up.

“My people,” says his father, his arms outstretched, a god here to present a miracle, “the Dalterians turned their backs on us in our time of greatest need, at the end days of our beloved homeworld! They could have saved us, but instead they left us at the mercy of Altea and its ilk. Queen Trigel bent the knee to Alfor and her descendents too have remained loyal to the rebel cause. Eight thousand years ago we gave them the punishment they deserved, but the Queen’s blood still lived. We hunted them diligently for eons, pruning out the royal line one by one.

“And now, finally, we have found the last.” His father unsheathes his bayard. The blade is so bright it almost hurts to look at it. “Frasim. The last Dalterian traitor.”

“Please.” The gladiator does not look so fearsome anymore. “Your Majesty. Please. I cannot fight any longer. My people have been reduced to mere dozens. I’ll do anything.”

His father plants his bayard on the ground, both hands resting atop the pommel.

“Where is the Green Lion?”

The gladiator shakes her head. “We don’t have it, we never did. The Alteans took them all and hid them ten thousand years ago. Queen Trigel herself could not find it. We have tried, believe me, we have tried. But we are nothing now. Please, spare Dalteria. I’ll join the Galra Empire. I’ll bend the knee to you.” She throws down her knives, hurls herself to the ground. “Your Majesty. Your Majesty, please—”

His father doesn’t even blink. The blast from the bayard is so hot that the blood is cauterized before it can spill. The gladiator’s flat teeth are coated with dirt as her head rolls across the floor.

Before parting, his father says, “You will uphold the honor of the Galra Empire, Prince Lotor.” Lotor salutes him.

The months never feel any longer or shorter. The visits are never canceled or delayed.

Sometimes, watching his father eat little and drink even less as starving gladiators meet their ends one after the other, hour after hour, spilling blood in every color you could imagine and in some colors you could not, Lotor thinks about what would happen if he were to rise from his throne, walk up to his father, and push him over the edge of the platform.

How long would it take for him to hit the ground? Which beast would sink their jaws into him first? 

 

* * *

 

On his three-hundredth birthday, Lotor is summoned home. 

“You are to live at Central Command,” the High Priestess informs him, showing him to a much larger quarters than his childhood one. “Your father has decided you are ready to sit on the War Council. In addition to your usual training, you will also meet with me once a week to begin studies in the dark arts.” She bows to him before leaving. “Welcome home, my Prince.”

He loves Central Command in the beginning. He breaks into every room he can find, steals bigger and better ships, configures the feed display in his room to access the banned channels. It feels so gloriously like freedom, like power almost within his grasp. It would be perfect, if it weren’t for the witch.

His father’s use of the dark arts is not general knowledge to ordinary citizens of the Empire. Even foot soldiers don’t quite believe the news when they’re first assigned to Central Command; they regard Haggar and her masked minions with a mix of disbelieving humor and suspicion and avoid crossing paths with them wherever possible. How the Druids are selected is a process known only to the High Priestess herself. The only thing the candidates ever seem to have in common is that before recruitment, they showed high magical potential, high tenacity, and very high pain tolerance.

Lotor believes in the High Priestess’ magic—has seen it firsthand many times—but proves an utter failure at mastering it. More than once he rips the study door off its hinges at the end of their weekly sessions, raving as he storms away. Shaping magic is like trying to take water in your hands and willing it to become snow. He is years ahead of his peers in all other war disciplines but this, and it makes him angrier than he was has ever felt.

“Why can’t you treat me with quintessence?” he demands of the High Priestess after a summoning backfires and burns through his favorite shirt. “I’ve seen your creations in the Colosseum. You’re wasting my father’s resources on slaves and beasts! If I were more powerful, I could master this drivel in mere weeks instead of wasting my years learning to lift cups from the table!”

The High Priestess extinguishes the purple flames with a wave of her hand.

“Do you know what quintessence really does, my Prince?”

Lotor frowns. “Don’t mock me, of course I know what—”

He stills. The High Priestess has one finger raised in the air, pointed at his chest. Ever so slowly, she crooks it toward herself as it pulling a string. Lotor cannot move. There is something hooked deep inside his ribs, a chain wrapped around his heart and lungs yanked too tight. It gets harder to breathe by the second. Black spots begin washing over his vision when she finally relaxes her hand. The feeling vanishes instantly.

“Wh—what,” Lotor gasps, massaging his sore throat, “did you just do to me?”

“I began removing your soul.” The High Priestess straightens the cuffs of her robe over her corpse-thin wrists. “Just a small piece of it. The bare minimum that would be required to give you a trial sample of quintessence. If you wanted enough to strengthen your magic—or even make you a Druid—it would have to be much more.

“You are aware that quintessence is derived from living souls, my Prince,” she continues, summoning a small ball of violet light in her palm, “but clearly you haven’t been paying attention during my lessons. You cannot pour water into a bowl that is already filled. If you take in more quintessence than your soul can keep, you will die, plain and simple. But if I took away the weaker parts of your soul and replaced them with something stronger, well—” she grins a sick, pointed grin, “—the pain would be unfathomable, but the power would be worth the price.”

“And you’ve done it before?” Lotor holds her gaze, only half-sure she’s not lying. “You’ve given others this power?”

“Oh, many times. Very few survive past Stage 1. Most are ‘slaves and beasts,’ as you said, but I would rather not waste good Galra blood until my findings are consistent. One day I am sure I will find a way to recreate the effects of a complete transfer; a being made entirely anew by my powers.” The High Priestess looks almost through him, eyes twinkling at some distant vision only she can see. “A soul of souls, an endless well of energy. Perhaps even a true immortal.”

“Then why do you deny me?” Lotor demands. “Am I not my father’s son? Am I not the true Heir of his empire? I deserve to be immortal more than anyone!”

“Of course you do, my Prince.” The High Princess grins again. “But in the short test I performed on you just moments ago, you proved that your body would not survive even a drop of quintessence. It would kill you before your heart had even stopped beating.”

His magic does not progress any faster or any further. He tries to lift cups from the table for several hundred years and only manages to make them rattle and clatter to the floor. He cannot summon balls of light in his palms or turn his body into shadow or channel power from a circle. He asks again, when he is near six hundred, for the High Priestess to try her test once more. She barely even glances in his direction.

“I do not need to," she says. "I know what the results would be.”

 

* * *

 

Legally, hybrids are not citizens of the Empire, and it is becoming a problem. There are Galra living on occupied planets who have no memory of a life on Daibazaal, no connection to the old roots and the old ways. They take spouses from the native population and their children multiply quickly. At the beginning of the expansion it was not a concern, for it was widely thought that all Galra hybrids would be sterile. Most were. But many others were not.

There are several million hybrids registered in the fringe quadrants, and that is where they typically remain. But of late there is pressure to change the law and grant them full-blood status. The High Priestess tells him not to be concerned with such petty matters.

“It’s because our troop numbers have been falling, isn’t it?” Lotor is still short for a Galra, but at least he has surpassed her. He leans forward, forcing the High Priestess to concede and back away from him. Her eyes are as cold as ever. “Morale is low. The insurgents have been too successful in the Hresha Daas system. We need more bait for the front lines, and offering them a chance to cleanse the sin of their tainted blood will fill up the recruit channels within days.”

“My Prince,” she says, nearly a hiss as she turns away, “you are well-informed on the events under a security clearance you do not have access to. May I compliment you on your devotion to your Empire even in the midst of your hardest stage of military training, which has occupied most of your time.”

“Hardly, I’d say.” He falls into step alongside her, forcing her to falter in place for a moment in order to walk behind him, as is proper. It’s always funny to see her try to fix her expression before he can see. “If this is the training designed to shape our finest soldiers, it is outdated by centuries. I passed all stages days ahead of my troop. My ranking score was equivalent to that of a general.”

“Is that so?” The High Priestess folds her hands into the sleeves of her cloak. “That is most impressive, my Prince. In fact, I shall report the news to your father and request you be granted your first post ahead of schedule.”

“I—There’s no need.” Lotor clasps his hands behind his back, digging his nails into his palms. “I do not want to appear pompous. I will finish training and await assignment with my fellow soldiers.”

“My Prince, you are too humble. How could you choose to limit yourself and what you may give to the Empire?” For just a moment, the High Priestess is one stride ahead of him. “If you are so knowledgeable about the half-breed recruitment, you should be in charge of it. I will have your father see that it is so.”

Within days he is stuck on a backwater base on a backwater planet, cursing the witch’s very existence.

The most unexpected—and most infuriating—part of being given a real command is the complete lack of respect he gets from Galra troops the moment his shuttle lands. Generals have no fear of laughing when he’s across the room. Cadets elbow their friends and point at him in full view of their superiors, gossiping loudly. He almost longs for the stares he used to get at Central Command.

_That’s the Prince?_

_He looks like a half-breed waiter I knew on Jharti’in-04!_

_Looks Fhyllian to me, they’re got that funny facial coloration._

_Nah, that’s Dresh. I had an old girlfriend with those teeth._

_Who do you think was the mother?_

_Forget that—who do you think is the actual father?_

These soldiers here have become lax in their pride for their homeworld, dulled by their boredom like blades left to rust. It does not take him long to bring them back to Central Command’s standards, nor does it take long for all of them to loathe him. _This is the witch’s fault,_ he thinks as he marches his men through freezing mountain passes and steaming, tangled jungles. _She’s put me here only to fix my father’s mistakes._

It is his own fault, however, that he does not expect the mutiny.

They come for him at night. He is pulled from his tent by the hair, gagged with someone’s sweat-stained undershirt and bound tightly with the heavy locks they use for violent prisoners. He can hear them jeering as they ready their weapons, laughing in the dark while he lays on his stomach like an animal caught in a trap. His mind is spinning with memories of his training, but his fear is binding him faster than the chains. His palms slip as he twists his wrists, trying to break free, and as he feels the heat of a loaded blaster being placed against his back Lotor realizes that despite all the danger he has been put through, he has never expected to die.

“Something wrong, cadets?”

His skin blisters as the blaster is moved away, the assailants making their retreat. He is rolled over onto his back, and meets the eyes of a smooth-skinned, wide-eyed hybrid soldier.

“My Prince!” she says, and kneels down to unbind him. When he stands she stays down, her gaze averted and her head bowed.

Lotor rubs his throat, studying the texture of her strange, dark hair.

“Soldier,” he finally says, and prays his voice does not sound raw from being gagged. “What is your name and planet of origin?”

“Acxa Gharros of Jherhet-X7.” She still does not look up.

“Rank?”

“Corporal.”

“Incorrect,” he says. “You’re a captain now. See to it that you’re given the proper uniform when we return to base.”

The soldier's head snaps up, her eyes wider than ever.

“Your Highness—” she clears her throat, schools her expression. “Your Highness, I can’t be a captain. I’m an enlisted soldier, I can't have a commission.”

Lotor narrows his eyes. “Captain Gharros,” he says slowly, “are you questioning the decisions of your Crown Prince?”

She stares at him, and then once more bows her head.

“No, Your Highness. I would never.”

The next morning, they pack up camp and prepare to march towards the cliffs. Before giving the orders to move out, Lotor takes his place at the front of the formation and calls everyone to attention.

He watches. He waits.

A full-blooded Galra could not smell the nervous sweat pouring out of three soldiers near the rear of the formation. But Lotor can. 

“Captain Gharros,” he orders, nodding to the traitors, “break their legs and wrists. We will march back to base and fly out in three days. If they are on board on time, they will not be arrested for high treason.” He hands his blaster to Acxa, who does a better job this time of keeping her expression calm. “Oh, and gag them too.”

He sends back record numbers of enlisting hybrid recruits to Central Command, and gleefully imagines the High Priestess’ dumbstruck face.

 

* * *

 

_A half-breed. What kind is he?_

It eats away at him until there is nothing left to gnaw. He makes fools of his father’s top generals and their battle records. He saves billions in defense costs. His sectors are free of rebellion, free of resistance, willing supplicants who are always surprised to hear him speak and find him eloquent. His father may have might, but he has charm. Charisma. The power to convince his subjects that he is their rightful ruler, and the strength and ability to prove it when challenged. Yet his father does not care, and never will.

Lotor is not good enough.

Lotor is not Galra enough.

Breaking into the imperial archives is as easy as rewiring the test pods he stole as a child. War records compose almost everything from the last ten thousand years, and what remains before his father’s rule is useless and ancient history. Lotor could almost laugh at them for leaving such a obvious gap between the two.

This is the history he seeks: that which his father is trying to hide. The spread of the strange disease that consumed their homeworld. The alliances between Daibazaal and the four other worlds that worshipped lions as gods. The person his father was before he was a warlord, and woman he has done everything in his power to erase.

But once again, his father has the upper hand. The little data Lotor manages to unlock is eroded to near-incomprehensibility. He flicks through vids that are so corrupted that only single frames remain, static streaking across the screen as he tosses files aside angrily. The broken alliance between Daibazaal and Altea is common history, and therefore he skips through vid after vid of his father on Altea, his father with King Alfor, smiles wide across their faces, arms thrown around each other’s shoulders. But then in between, Lotor slowly watches a pattern begin to emerge.

His father is with an Altean woman, again and again, the datestamps spanning nearly two centuries.

She wears Galra court regalia. In formal shots she stands arm-in-arm with his father. Most of the data has been corrupted beyond repair, but finally there is a file with a small translation of the Altean description at the bottom of a group shot: _His Imperial Majesty (left) with King Alfor of Altea (center) and an Altean alchemist (right) at the dedication of the Lion Ships, Altea, 03.46.90455._ In every picture the woman is unnamed, or dubbed “Alchemical Consultant” if she is labelled at all. He slams his fist on the console and swears as he hunts back further in time, still pre-war, still before the end of Altea’s friendship.

In one vid, his father is holding a child. A white-haired, long-eared child wearing a traditional Galra warrior's helm.

Lotor’s heart is beating frantically and he cannot understand why. He saw his father once a month, every month, for every year until he was transferred to Central Command. Of course his father would have seen him as an infant too, but did he really carry him like this? Did he really hold him in his arms?

He zooms in on the picture. Tightly curled hair, brown skin, two tiny rose-colored crescent marks. The child is not him.

_His Imperial Majesty (center) with Princess Allura of Altea (center) at the Princess’ blessing ceremony, Altea, 07.99.90561._

Lotor slumps back in his chair. With a wave of his hand, the file is deleted. His head is swimming, hands clenched in fists. The frozen vid fades away, the Altean girl’s face vanishing into light and pixels, his father becoming nothing but lines of empty code.

And just beneath it is another source.

> **PROJECT UNITY: TRIAL NOTES**
> 
> **TRIAL 23: SAMPLE CELLS ZKN5571-ZKN5600 TESTED AGAIN WITH MODIFICATIONS FROM HNA24-HNA30. RESULTS NEGATIVE. NO CELLULAR GROWTH, NO MEIOSIS. ARTIFICIAL CONCEPTION FAILED. EXPERIMENT CLOSED.**

He reads the datestamp, then checks it again to be sure. The experiments both started and stopped over nine thousand years ago. He has only a beginner’s grasp of genetic research, thanks to the High Priestess’ intervention so long ago, but he knows enough. Someone was trying to create an Heir. Someone was trying to create him.

Someone knows the second subject’s name. Lotor is quite willing to bet who.

 

* * *

 

Storming into her lab, he all but throws the holoscreen of the project notes at the High Priestess.

“Tell me what you know, witch,” he spits.

Her yellow eyes glance over them, then narrow on him.

“I am no code-breaker, Your Highness. Where did you find this?”

“Enough. I am sick of your games.” He brandishes his finger inches from her nose. “You will give me full access to the files, or you will tell me here and now who I am. _What_ I am. You were the head of the project, you’ve always told me so. You know where the genetic code came from.”

He watches her face. Her expression does not change. Her eyes are thin slits, her mouth drawn taut.

“Who is my mother?”

She does not answer.

_“Who is my mother?”_

“You have no mother.” Her voice is the rasp of a corpse, of a ghost. “All tests to produce perfect hybrid DNA from two cells failed. Your starter cells were cloned from your father directly, then mutations were triggered to modify them. But your blood is pure: all of your cells were copies of your father’s, therefore you are Galra and only Galra. You are the true heir of Zarkon. You never had a—”

He slaps the High Priestess across the face. Her head snaps back from the force of it, her body crumpling as it slams against the wall. She struggles to stand again. Her white hair is sticking in strands against her face, her hood crooked, skewed to one side. She looks at him like he has dropped from the sky.

“You—you—” She touches her jaw, flinching when she rubs it and looking even more shocked at that it hurts. “You— _impertinent little brat!”_

Lotor does not know when she strikes. He is writhing in agony before he even realizes she raised her hands. He can hardly hear the High Priestess as she screams at him, black lightning dancing between her gnarled fingers, enflaming every nerve within him.

“After all I’ve sacrificed for you!” she shrieks. Her hood has fallen halfway down her head. Through his eyes swimming with tears, her face is a furious blur, a bloody smudge of purple and red and white. “After all I’ve done! A thousand years spent raising a thankless bastard, a miserable child with no ambition, no discipline! You will be the downfall of this Empire! You will never be worthy of your father’s throne!”

Tears spill from his eyes, rolling down his cheeks as he convulses and shakes, every cell crying out for the pain to end. The spell does not lift.

“Please,” he croaks, “please—”

The energy seizes him in a fist and pitches him away, his limbs flailing as he rolls like a child’s toy. The lightning inside him is gone. For a moment he wonders if he’s died—if his father’s witch has finally killed him—before the dull ache flares in his bones, the aftermath of the spell buzzing in his skin. There are voices in the hall but he can’t understand the words. Someone shakes him slightly, squeezes his wrist to feel for a heartbeat. Her face appears, looming over him.

“Please,” he says again, though he doesn’t know why. The High Priestess doesn’t answer. Her eyes are not yellow, he realizes. The sclera are a milky white, the iris dull violet and covered with an iridescent sheen like polarized glass.

The Druids chant to lift him from the floor and carry him away. Though the pain is gone, he cannot stop the tears that still brim and bead against his eyelashes, salty, warm, and bitter in his mouth.

 

* * *

 

He is summoned at the usual time, to the usual meeting place.

“My son,” his father says, “it has come to my attention that your talents would best serve the Empire in another capacity than your duties here at Central Command. You will report to a post in the outer colonies in the Reffret Quadrant, effective immediately. You will oversee the troops already appointed there, but you may have full control of choosing your personal guard, if you wish.” The emperor bites back a yawn. “You will be summoned home when we have need of you.”

“Of course, Father. I will leave at once.” Lotor bows low, fist pressed over his heart. _“Vrepit sa.”_

 

* * *

 

The Reffret Quadrant is distant and dark, its lone star burning out slowly like a flame with no more fuel left to feed it. Lotor watches it flicker from his command post, waving the door open when his aide knocks.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness, but I just received your order regarding recruitment for your personal guard, and I think there’s been some interference—”

“There’s been no interference. I wrote that order myself, and sent it to you myself. Was it your eyes perhaps that failed you?” He opens a holoscreen and scrolls through his correspondence. “Here, allow me to read it to you so that you may understand plainly:

 _‘For my personal guard, I wish to appoint four able Galra soldiers of hybrid blood, holding Lieutenant rank or higher. All qualified soldiers should report to Reffret Quadrant for testing in order to complete the selection process. Those chosen will be promoted to the rank of General and will serve under the orders of the Crown Prince alone.’_ Does that clear it up for you?”

“I understand, sir, but—” the aide clears his throat, trying to sound brave, “—but there are no half-br—hybrids, I mean, who qualify. They’re not allowed to hold the rank of Lieutenant. They aren’t allowed commissions.”

He flinches when Lotor laughs.

“Of course, how could I forget! I will amend the order, of course.” He smiles, drafting it on the holoscreen as he speaks, “‘Four able Galra soldiers of hybrid blood, of any rank.’ Perfect.” He crosses his legs, waving the aide away. “Now, see to it that this is distributed Empire-wide. That’s an order.”

The look on the man’s face lightens his mood for the rest of the day: an amusing mix of shock and horrified respect. _One day,_ he thinks, whistling as he scrolls through his schedule, _that’s the look that I will cut clean off the High Priestess’ face. That’s the look my father will wear when he lays dying at my feet._


End file.
